


let me paint this clear (life is short, my dear)

by keyshrine



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, the gays are here and they are ready to rule thedas with an iron fist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 22:45:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6060910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyshrine/pseuds/keyshrine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adaar is cold in almost everything that she does and is; cold magic, frost dripping from fingertips and trails of ice left behind her—cold words, elegant and hard—cold eyes. Cold, cold, cold. </p><p>Until she is with Vivienne.</p><p>Then, she is warm—warm flesh, warm eyes, warm words, warm heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me paint this clear (life is short, my dear)

**Author's Note:**

> hello darkness my old friend...HONESTLY i shouldn't be allowed to write any DA fic at all ever because it all comes out like this. super gay and super adaar/vivienne oriented. oh well! no one's complaining right i mean LOOK AT THEM!!!

None of them know Adaar's true name.

(Leliana does, of course, and perhaps Josephine because the two are an undeniable pair, but neither of them speak of it, and if they've ever been asked they lie, or they simply say that it is not for them to know, and that is that.)

It is something that Vivienne does not _mind,_ not truly, and none of the others linger on it just as she does not linger on it; it is not important. Lady Inquisitor Adaar—that is all they need to know. The Herald of Andraste. Qunari. Beautiful. Breathtaking, really, all intricate silvery scars laced pale over dark gray skin, coal-tinted freckles dusted over the bridge of a long, thin nose, white hair that spills between silver-capped horns and down the slope of a straight back.

(Muscles rippling beneath Vivienne's touch, and a husky voice that affects her far more than any voice should when it wants to, and vitaar that she paints onto Adaar's face when given permission and she is always given permission—she paints in long, spiraling lines, carefully, for she has long since memorized the patterns, not that she admits it; she does not need to, they both know the truth of her dedication just fine without speaking of it.)

In fact, she has never lingered on it; not even once. She has never thought of the fact that it is _odd,_ not to know her lover's name. Not the surname, not the Adaar, which means some sort of...cannon, if Vivienne recalls correctly. (She does, of course. She never forgets anything about Adaar.) Her _first_ name.

They are laying side-by-side in the Inquisitor's grandly decorated bed when it occurs to her, suddenly, and Vivienne blinks, tips her head to look at Adaar who is silent beside her, red gaze fixated on their linked hands. Vivienne pulls, smoothly, and her fingers slip from Adaar's grasp. “Darling?”

“Mm?”

“What is your name?”

Adaar blinks, looks at her finally; she seems a little dumbfounded, as though that had been the very last question she'd expected Vivienne to ask. “What?”

Vivienne cocks a brow in challenge. “You heard me.”

“...Adaar,” her lover says finally, stretches, arches her back, knows that Vivienne is distracted whenever she does so. But only when she _cares_ to be; and, for now, she does not care to be. “My name is Adaar.”

“No.”

“No?”

“You know very well what I mean, my dear,” Vivienne drawls, and if there is a flicker of disappointment, stashed away tiny and squashed easily in her chest to know that Adaar does not trust her with her real name—she does not acknowledge it, and it is indeed squashed, “If you do not want to tell me, simply _say_ so, but do not dance around the subject. It's terribly transparent of you.”

Adaar sits up, and for a moment Vivienne is overtaken by a stupid thought: that she has somehow upset Adaar so deeply that the Qunari cannot possibly bear to be in her presence any longer.

Then, of course, Adaar proves her wrong. _Of course._ Adaar is not so petty, not so easily angered. She never has been. Instead, she is only stared down at, and Adaar tilts her head in a way that makes gray-white curls spill over the slope of a slate shoulder, the ornamental caps on her horns glinting in the sunlight. “I am sorry,” Adaar says.

(She says a lot, in Vivienne's presence, and Vivienne would be lying and terribly at that if she said that it did not please her, did not fill her with a sense of pride in both herself and in Adaar to know that she was the one who Adaar trusted the most, who Adaar spoke to the most, for she uses words so sparingly in the presence of others.)

Vivienne's eyes flutter in a little roll. “Do not _apologize._ Simply tell me your name. Or tell me that you do not want me to know your name, and that will be it. Hm?” Adaar looks – odd, not quite upset but not quite content, either. Hesitant. Vivienne reaches up, strokes Adaar's arm with the backs of her fingers, slowly. There are scars all over Adaar—from fires, from blades, from whips and spikes, an animal bite on the inside of her forearm, but this is one of the few untouched places, smooth and tough with muscle.

“I do not tell anyone my name, Vivienne,” Adaar says, voice soft.

Vivienne battles her disappointment ruthlessly, crushes it until it's not there at all. “Very well,” she murmurs, watches as Adaar's bottom lip is pulled beneath pearly teeth and bitten on.

“I have upset you,” Adaar whispers.

Vivienne laughs. The sound rings throughout the room. “Nonsense. You will tell me when you want to tell me, and that is all. It is only a name, and – I already have one for you, as do we all. Adaar. If you would like that to be the only name that any of us will ever know, that is perfectly fine by me. A name is a name.”

“Issala.”

Vivienne blinks. “Pardon?”

“Issala. My name. It is Issala.”

She's suddenly filled with a sort of warmth as she watches Adaar lay down again, curling up against her side. (She's huge, a giant in comparison to anyone else in Skyhold, but she makes herself the smallest in this bed—or tries to, at least, always overly careful of her horns and Vivienne's flesh.) Vivienne links their fingers together again, squeezes gently. “What does it mean?”

Adaar smiles wryly. “Literally? Dust.”

“It is beautiful,” Vivienne says, and kisses Adaar.

It is not a lie; the name sounds beautiful. The meaning, however...that can be debated, but she sincerely hopes that they will spend none of their time spent together doing so.

“I still prefer Adaar,” her lover says when they separate, slowly as her eyes flicker open and meet Vivienne's.

Vivienne scoffs, as though she's said the silliest thing in the world. “Of course you do, my dear. You are Inquisitor Adaar now, to them; you are Adaar and nothing but. You always have been since the very moment that you told our dear Seeker your name in that dungeon. But... _Issala_ —that will be a name for us, a name to be shared between us and for no one else. Unless you wish it, I will not tell a soul.”

“Thank you,” Adaar murmurs quietly after a moment, voice soft. Softer than usual, certainly. Adaar is cold in almost everything that she does and is; cold magic, frost dripping from fingertips and trails of ice left behind her—cold words, elegant and hard—cold eyes. Cold, cold, cold.

Until she is with Vivienne. (That spark of pride rises again.)

Then, she is warm—warm flesh, warm eyes, warm words, warm heart. (She had even set fire to the drapes the first time they slept together.)

“Of course, darling. You do realize that it's somewhat _discouraging_ to know that you have no faith in my ability to keep a secret?” Her tone of voice suggests that it's utterly stupid, really, to assume that she'd go around telling, to assume _anything._ She is a master of the Game, she has spent years keeping secrets and years smiling falsely and years spent doing everything and now – now that she is curled up beneath no less than three heavy furs with the Herald of Andraste – is the very realest she has ever been and she would not ever throw that away, not for anything.

“I have faith in everything you do or will do, Vivienne,” Adaar says, characteristically serious, and presses a soft kiss to her cheek.

Vivienne's heart does not flutter; that is not a thing that her heart does, not ever, not once. (Sometimes. Once, twice, more and more and more times with Bastien. She does not think of that, though.) And she most certainly does not kiss Adaar on the mouth to keep her smile from turning unbearably fond, because she is not that person, she is not a juvenile, in-love child whose heart flutters.

She still lets the smile grow, willingly, when Adaar turns away from her.

They are in the Frostback Mountains. It is cold; there is a minuscule crack in the ceiling above the bed left unattended that she will have to get someone to mend _immediately,_ and in Adaar's quarters it seems as though all noise from all other parts of Skyhold echo back to this specific room, irritatingly—and the sky is torn open above them, the Breach an aching emerald amongst what should be only blue, the exact tint of the tear on Adaar's palm, flashing green against Vivienne's hip now and again (and she's always startled, until Adaar reminds her that it simply _does that sometimes,_ and Vivienne cannot help but think, but it shouldn't, but it shouldn't.) and the world is ending, the demons are shrieking, people are dying, Adaar is hurting, Adaar will hurt more and more and more until it is all over, one way or another.

But: right now, this, in this moment, with silence all around them that is warm in contrast to the actual air in the room, which, as always, is freezing without the fire in the hearth lit—it is so, so good, and she would not think of complaining with Adaar at her side.

Then again –

“Darling,” Vivienne sighs, stares up at that crack where glints of blue sky peer through, “You really _should_ get that fixed.”

**Author's Note:**

> i just spent most of my time sucking up to vivienne in my playthrough and hoping that she'd eventually fall in love with my adaar but it never happened :(


End file.
